CORRESPONDENCE 301
Bay immediately upon the settlement of the Mexican War. It is my deliberate opinion that missionaries in whom your Board can confide should be appointed and sustained till by God's blessing an interest shall be awakened sufficient to sustain itself, and afford assistance to the surrounding country This whole country and Upper California are emphatically mission- ary grounds, and our relation to the whole Pacific Coast and the half of the globe in our front demands prompt and faith- ful action. If our position excites so much interest in the political and commercial world, ought not the churches to turn the eye in this direction and ask: Have we no interest in all these movements ? Whatever God has in store for our majestic River and our spacious and safe harbors on the Pacific, one thing is now reduced to a demonstration: We must become a part of the great North American Republic. It remains for the Christian churches of that Republic to say whether our territory shall prove a blessing or a sore curse to the nation. Shall the needed help be denied us? As a people, we are in the most help- less infancy; the power of the Gospel of our ever Blessed Saviour must be exerted to bind this legion and drive it into our mighty Pacific, or we shall be abandoned, the prey of the worst of spirits and the basest of passions. Dear brother, it is far beyond the power of language to describe the blessings of the Gospel. While we, almost isolated and faint, pray and labor and look with longing eyes toward the parent land, shall we not see this bow of promise hanging over our eastern skies : "The Lord will send deliverance out of Zion"? No doubt the time is near at hand when the facilities of communication will be greatly multiplied and a direct mail route will enable us to correspond directly two or three times a year, 118 and vessels will be monthly leaving this place for the States and bearing cargoes directly from the States in return. We wait with patience for these changes. We feel that we are passing
n8For a time in 1846 direct mail service had been established with Weston, Mo., at the rate of fifty cents a single sheet, but 'this was discontinued after nine months. Geo. H. Himes, History of the Press in Ore., Ore. Hist. Soc. Quar. Ill :343.
